South Park - Sold to Ubisoft

January 24th, 2013, 13:03

It seems the rumours were true and Ubisoft has purchased the publishing rights for South Park: The Stick of Truth from the now-defunct THQ. No word on the objection from South Park Digital Studios but Kotaku has a letter from THQ bosses Brian Farrell and Jason Rubin:

To All THQ Employees:
We now have the answers we've been seeking through our financial restructuring and
Chapter 11 case. While much will be written, here are the facts of the bids and auction
that occurred t:

Yesterday morning, we received a competing bid for the operating business,
along with Clearlake's offer, and numerous offers for separate assets.

During an auction process that lasted over 22 hours, the final conclusion was
that the separate-asset bids would net more than a single buyer for the majority
of the company.

Shortly, we will, present the results to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, which must
concur with our assessment.

Appropriate bittersweet and all due to mismanagement of the company. Hopefully the new owners don't destroy the studios and Ip's.

Here is what the assets sold for-

Relic - purchased by Sega for $26 million
Volition - purchased by Koch Media for $22.3 million
Evolve (IP) - purchased by Take-Two for $11 million
Metro (IP) - purchased by Koch Media for $5.8 million
South Park (IP) - purchased by Ubisoft for $3.2 million
THQ Montreal - purchased by Ubisoft for $2.5 million
Homefront (IP) - purchased by Crytek for $500,000

I have not purchased a ubisoft game since the on-line always drm; but people are saying ubi-soft has learned a lesson and the newer games are not requiring that drm (folks seem pretty happy with farcry 3). Also I think there was a news bit somewhere yesterday that south park is claiming that thq did not have the right to sell the ip to ubisoft.
-
btw I am a heavy steam user and while it is not perfect I really don't have any complaints about it; i do have major complaints with the drm in dragon age as well as origin and gwfl

IMO uPlay is definetly the worst DRM out there, but still it isn't the worst possible one. Also, if the game is good, somehow you adapt to it, at least I did. It still feels as an annoyance, but not as a huge one. That also means I'll buy Stick of Truth no matter who bought the publishing rights.

We may only hope that some day Ubisoft will realize that huge sales of FarCry3 happened because it's a great game and not because of the draconic DRM.

Ubisoft's DRM is now relatively benign (one time activation, no disk required after installation). You do have the slightly annoying Uplay client but you can set it to play offline only, turn off all the malfunctioning crap like save syncing and its not too bad. Some of the older games also have the always on DRM patched out (PoP Forgotten Sands and AC2 were two recent ones I played).

"Relic going to Sega is weird. Not the match I expected to see."
Most think it has something to do with Sega's recent plan to make a Creative Assembly Warhammer Fantasy game. Sega may be trying to gather all the Warhammer eggs into its basket. I'd also point out that Sega's ownership of CA is a pretty good sign for how they could deal with Relic. Hopefully.

Originally Posted by killias2
"Relic going to Sega is weird. Not the match I expected to see."
Most think it has something to do with Sega's recent plan to make a Creative Assembly Warhammer Fantasy game. Sega may be trying to gather all the Warhammer eggs into its basket. I'd also point out that Sega's ownership of CA is a pretty good sign for how they could deal with Relic. Hopefully.

Originally Posted by azarhal
I didn't know Sega was using the Warhammer IP, makes more sense now.

It was announced last month Sega acquired the rights. Creative Assembly is developing a new fantasy warhammer game. More news will be avaible later Sega said sometime after 2013. Rome 2 is there main focus right now.